My name is Joe Boyd. I'm a husband, father, storyteller, pastor, filmmaker, improvisor, actor, author and a post-religious rebel pilgrim embedding myself into the story of an ancient Jewish homeless revolutionary.

Thursday, November 30, 2006

I cannot overemphasize how quickly the weeks go by. It's eerie. People tell me that it is because I am getting older. I'm not sure if that makes sense or not to me. I think it has something to do with my life having no definitive pattern and living in LA/Orange County. This week Monday and Tuesday were very busy with work and auditions. (The Ultimate Poker taping took ten hours on Monday alone.) By the time I took a breath it was Wednesday. Tomorrow is Friday and I feel like this week hasn't even started yet.

Ah well. It's probably all in my head. We will be going to Indiana for a week from Christmas to New Years. I'm looking forward to slowing down...though I know myself well enough to know that I will grew restless of resting come day four or five. January promises the beginning of pilot season and the finalizing of fund-raising for my film. Those weeks should crawl by...

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Thanksgiving awaits. Over all, a pretty nice holiday when done correctly: friends/family, football, no dietary restrictions and the annual viewing of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacations. I'm looking forward to it.

Monday is a very full day of auditions. I'm reading for a guest starring role in the CBS show Numbers in the morning. Then off to HBO for an audition and finally a callback for an AMEX commercial. Any one of those three would be a nice little holiday gift for the Boyd family budget.

The Ultimate Poker Challenge show is supposed to start next week too, but I haven't been given the day yet. I'm still on hold for the soap "The Heiress" as well. It shoots down in San Diego sometime before Christmas. So, yeah. Things are still going on the acting front. Even with all of that, I spend the bulk of my time working on producing Hitting the Nuts. We could have some big news to officially report next week regarding some of the cast.

I'm off to attempt to do nothing for four or five days. Hopefully I can stick to that plan.

Friday, November 17, 2006

Pretty much these days I am trying to balance three jobs (not counting the whole parenting and husbanding professions.)

Those three jobs would be acting, producing and the part-time work that I do for The Crossing. For a while the producing and acting felt like one in the same, but as both progress I am starting to realize that managing my time and my schedule becomes even more important. I did not have an audition today so my plan was to spend the day working on several things for the film as well as my lesson for Lifelines tomorrow night. That's a solid eight hour work day. The problem with my plan came when my agent called and told me to get to Santa Monica asap for a straight to callback Office Depot commercial audition. Somebody messed up in the planning of the commercial because you never get called an hour before the audition...and it shoots in two days, which is a very fast turn-around. I should have been suspicious early on.

The audition was a complete embarrasment. Not on my end, because I never got to actually audition. I drove for one hour and sat in the waiting room for over two hours waiting to get in. Everyone in the room (and there were lots of us) grew more and more impatient. Finally, the casting director just came out and sent most of us home. This violates about a dozen SAG rules, so maybe I'll get some fat penalty check in the mail next month...but it was a complete waste of time. Then Los Angeles conspired against me and it took me another three hours to get home in rush hour traffic. Now it's 9:43 and I didn't get to do anything I was supposed to do today.

All that, and to appease my lovely wife Grey's Anatomy is our number one priority Tivo show (her favorite) and The Office (my favorite) is our number two. The geniuses at NBC decided to run them head to head tonight so Tivo killed The Office gang in favor or a bunch of brilliant Seattle surgeons all of whom aren't bright enough to have a normal social life.

Well, I think I'm done complaining now. I need to get to work anyway...

Saturday, November 11, 2006

I got an offer today to co-host The Ultimate Poker Challenge syndicated TV show. My agent is negotiating the terms on Monday, so I'll know more details then. Figured you would all like to know...I'll post more info as it comes in.

Most of my days this week were spent working on the Hitting the Nuts project. We are trying to finalize investors...lots of e-mails and phone calls, etc.

If you haven't checked out the website, it's linked below and to the right -->

Sunday, November 05, 2006

The website for "Hitting the Nuts", my first feature film as a producer, is now live. We are still fixing some minor things with it, but go ahead and take a look around. Garrett Curry, a buddy from college, designed the artwork. If you like it and need someone for yourself, let me know and I'll give you his info...I really like his stuff.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

I just returned from an audition for a new NBC pilot as a series regular. I did pretty well considering...it was straight to producers and only about eight guys were there. I recognized most of them from the imrpov world-all really talented guys. I wish I had time in the room to do more. I was a solid B+. We'll see how it translates.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

The boys made out tonight trick or treating-both in our neighborhood and with the Van Druffs. Eli counted 188 pieces of candy. (That's a very Eli thing to do.) Aidan made up a higher number without bothering to count his candy, which caused a fight between them. (That's a very Aidan thing to do.) Overall, a good time was had by all and we have roughly 350 more pieces of candy than we started the day with. This is great news for me because I am currently completely off of sugar and carbs.

I booked tomorrow...working on an industrial video for a company called Northrup Grummon. It is supposed to wrap by 5:00 and then I go immediately to an audition for a new series of short films/commercials for Mini Cooper. They are very fun spots. I'm waiting to hear back from a few film auditions that went well last week as well.

Things progress with "Hitting the Nuts" as well. I sent the first official offer out today to a "name" actor. I'm hoping that he comes on board. It's a great part for him and he seems somewhat interested.